Honestly I don't see much difference between 15 and 5 in terms of opponents. Higher than 5 is mostly about time commitment (meaning if you don't have 20+ hours to go from 5 to legend, you're probably not going to make it).

I think it's way too early to speculate on the metagame in the new format considering cards are yet to be released. For example, patches didn't seem too good until Small-Time Buccaneer arrived.

Title: It was given by the XKCD moderators to me because they didn't care what I thought (I made some rantings, etc). I care what YOU think, the joke is forums.xkcd doesn't care what I think.

I've personally found getting from 5 to legend about twice as difficult as getting from 20 to 5 (both for time and quality of opponents). Only done it a couple times, mind you, but the competition is 99% quality up there instead of maybe 50% after 15 and 75% after 10. It's definitely not just about time commitment, though. Win rate is way more important than that.

I went on a crafting spree last week to build Miracle Rogue, only to find myself losing 100% of my games against damn pirates. Deck is fun (I do love Rogue), just not good!

Arena's pretty fun. I've enjoyed the addition of Un'Goro there. Some new fat beaters to play around with, though the game is still favouring slow decks, so not much change there. Dinosize is a fucking nightmare to play against though - beware the Paladin! They now have the power to blow you out!

I went on a crafting spree last week to build Miracle Rogue, only to find myself losing 100% of my games against damn pirates. Deck is fun (I do love Rogue), just not good!

Un'goro miracle rogue is considered Tier 1 by Tempostorm though it does have a poor pirate warrior matchup. I think pirate warrior is dropping off in favor of taunt warrior though. And taunt warrior gets crushed by miracle rogue.

That's true. I've started playing Standard again, and yes, the deck is good against most others. Now that pirates are less popular, I'm having a much easier time. I'm pretty sure I'm bad at playing it though. Shit's hard. No matter whether or not I decide to save my coins until later, or use them all right now, I end up feeling like I made the wrong choice.

I hit rank 15 without too much effort with Midrange Hunter last season. If I manage to get Rat Pack (...probably not) I might try to hit rank 5 this season. Or I could go with Freeze Mage in Wild and see how far that gets me, though I'm guessing not very far? I wonder how it fares. I'm not sure how essential Thalnos is to that deck, I don't have it but I've been saving 1600 dust for a legendary for quite a while now.

TaintedDeity wrote:Tainted Deity

suffer-cait wrote:One day I'm gun a go visit weeks and discover they're just a computer in a trashcan at an ice cream shop.

Does Freezemage play Thalnos? I haven't played Wild for a few seasons now, but I don't remember them playing it back in the day. As far as I recall, their only minions were Mad Scientist, Doomsayer and Alexstrasa.

I feel like the new quest combo freeze mage is better than the old one. The old one had some pretty terrible matchups you would have seen regularly in wild. Tempo mage might actually be more common in wild than freeze mage. The new discover a spell and reduce it's cost by 2 epic is pretty nice in tempo with apprentice and flamewakers. When I get quests I play either standard or wild depending on which I think is stronger for that class. For mage, I go wild because Tempo is quicker on winning games and playing mage cards.

Apparently the primordials are amazing and lead to insane damage combos. I don't have primordial glyph though :( If I had those and thalnos I'd definitely give that deck a try.

Also, in Arena news...I made...11 wins! I was 2-2 at one point, but rather than giving up like usual (ie just playing randomly) I decided to keep going, and got pretty far to my surprise. I felt inspired by a friend who I was explaining some basic concepts to (he only has 3 weeks playing the game) and just yesterday made 10 wins. "You taught me well" he said. I felt so proud T_T

Not sure how the deck rates since I don't use heartharena.

Spoiler:

Definitely felt awful the few games I didn't draw a 2 or 1 drop early. I my first and last losses were rather close, and I think I could've won the first loss if I thought harder. Last game came down to an enemy Medivh (it's always a Medivh isn't it) having a secret up, me casting Dinosize as a last resort, and finding out it wasn't Counterspell, but MANA BIND. If they hadn't drawn Frost Elemental to freeze another minion of mine, I could've won. I topdecked Truesilver instead of a Spikeridged Steed. :(

But it felt absolutely great and is my first 11 win run. Yay!

TaintedDeity wrote:Tainted Deity

suffer-cait wrote:One day I'm gun a go visit weeks and discover they're just a computer in a trashcan at an ice cream shop.

Nice deck, Weeks! Spikeridged Steed is insanely good in Arena, and Dinosize is a bomb. I played a Paladin run with 3 Dinosize last week! I think got 10 wins on that run if I remember right.

I think you already hit on the weakness of this deck - lack of 2 drops. Would have been nice to ditch a couple of your 4 and 5 cost cards to get more early game. You should win the late game anyway with those cards, so just making sure you survive to get to that point would be key. Nice job though! There's no shame in losing to the final boss.

That's an awful wild tempo mage deck. That's midrange. Tempo mage is not going to place ice blocks and ice barriers. I also don't use Thalnos in tempo mage due to speed but I think I probably have in the past. He's hardly necessary. Tempo mage is leveraging the insane power of cheap mage spells, particularly in conjunction with synergising minions mana wurm, sorcerer's apprentice, and flamewaker. Hard to play mage in wild without mad scientist but the balance is key. I use 2 scientists along with just 2 secrets: 1x mirror entity and 1x counterspell. I also consider mirror image and arcane missiles to be what define tempo mage vs some kind of hybrid. If those spells aren't powerful enough, you're not stressing tempo over value so you're not really playing tempo mage.

Title: It was given by the XKCD moderators to me because they didn't care what I thought (I made some rantings, etc). I care what YOU think, the joke is forums.xkcd doesn't care what I think.

How similar is Hearthstone to MtG? (If that question oversteps some invisible line, I claim ignorance of it.) You seem to be talking about standard vs. wild -- what are the differences? And what is arena? Is it the Hearthstone term for "official"/tournament style games?

Hearthstone and MtG are quite different in scope and style and feel, but if you already play MtG, picking up Hearthstone is super easy. Lots of similarities to the gameplay, though strategy's a bit different primarily because of the differences in combat and mana. Both are great games though.

- Wild is Vintage/Legacy: Any card is legal to play.- Standard is Standard: The last two years of cards are legal.- Arena is Limited: It's basically Draft except you're not actually seeing what your opponents are seeing. You're just picking one card from a random selection of cards every time to make the best deck.

There are two other types of gameplay in Hearthstone as well: - Adventures: Single player against the computer, fighting through a storyline against bosses who play by different rules.- Tavern Brawl: Some random new way to play every week. Mostly focused on more casual play, but some of them are lots of fun and a challenge to play by new rules.

It's a fantastic game. I've been playing a long time now. If you want to play, kalira, use this link and you can get a free pack or something.

I haven't really played MtG, but from what I gather (...) it's like they cut a few stuff from MtG and made things somewhat simpler. You automatically gain mana per turn, so no lands, also no mana burn. No instants, there are only "secrets" that do something on your opponent's turn. Decks are 30 cards, players have 30 life to start with.

"Standard" is supposed to be the official, most well maintained and freshest of the available formats, where you can only play cards from certain expansions (like Limited from MtG, I think?). Specifically, cards from expansions 2 years or older get "rotated" out and can't be played in Standard. This excludes the Basic set, which is free for everyone, and the Classic set, which are evergreen cards that you can get through an in-game currency called Arcane Dust. You can also buy packs for in-game gold, another currency which can't get you cards directly, or real money.

"Wild" is the set of all HS cards, and the game modes where you can play cards regardless of their age are called "Wild" as well.

When building a deck, you first pick a class equivalent to one of the WoW classes (mage, warrior, paladin, etc.), then choose cards from three groups: neutral cards available to every class, tri-class cards available to three classes only, and class cards specific to your class. All tri-class and neutral cards (so far) are minions (creatures). Some class cards are spells. There are 9 classes total.

Constructed ("Play" mode in-game) is...constructed. You can pick either Standard or Wild format, build your deck, and play games in a ranked ladder or unranked matches. (There's two ranked ladders, one for Standard and one for Wild)

Arena is a game mode where you draft a deck from 30 picks of three random cards each, offered to you in succession, with the class restrictions in mind. It is also Standard format, so no old cards. You play until you lose 3 games or reach 12 wins. It's preeeetty tough to get those 12 wins.

edit: ninja'd but I'm NOT LETTING MY PRECIOUS WORDS GO TO WASTE

and yes it's pretty fun, I started playing in 2014 when the game was only ONE SET and kind of boring, but it's so much more interesting now.

TaintedDeity wrote:Tainted Deity

suffer-cait wrote:One day I'm gun a go visit weeks and discover they're just a computer in a trashcan at an ice cream shop.

kalira wrote:How similar is Hearthstone to MtG? (If that question oversteps some invisible line, I claim ignorance of it.) You seem to be talking about standard vs. wild -- what are the differences? And what is arena? Is it the Hearthstone term for "official"/tournament style games?

It's extremely M:TG like. Standard and wild is simply standard and legacy in terms of M:TG equivalents (not that there's much legacy with fewer years of history so it's more like "extended" used to be)

Major rules differences, there are only two. 1) No lands and decks size reduced accordingly to 30 (2x of each max, some restricted cards). Starting hand is 3 instead of 7. Mana is all colorless and grows at 1 per turn up to 10. In practice a 60 card magic deck with 20 lands has an increasingly likely chance of missing a land drop from very small to very large (out to basically 1 in 3) where in hearthstone it's always 100%. Higher casting costs are much easier to play in hearthstone 2) blocking is chosen by the attacker not the defender. In fact there are zero possible decisions made in your opponents turn. The reactionary side to magic is pretty much gone.

Minor rule changes include increasing starting life to 30, sequentially taking damage when you run out of cards rather than simply losing instantly, patching cards on the fly, 9 classes instead of 5 colors and only being able to play 1 color/class per deck + "neutral" (which is basically colorless artifact creatures only). Hearthstone also has a lot of random effects and random card generation that are much easier to do in a digital game than in cards but are typical MTG in impact.

extremely low casting cost minions are stronger in Hearthstone for their cost but they are similar. Medium costs (say 2-5) are comparable, sometimes hearthstone cards have effects that would be too strong in magic. Higher cost hearthstone cards are much easier to play than M:TG cards at that cost so they are much much weaker.

Title: It was given by the XKCD moderators to me because they didn't care what I thought (I made some rantings, etc). I care what YOU think, the joke is forums.xkcd doesn't care what I think.

I opened the last wing of Karazhan with my Arena reward and...you're not supposed to just waltz through heroic Free Medivh, right? I can barely reach Malchezaar with 15 health and he just Twisting Nethers you, then drops two 6/6 per turn. I watched TrumpSC do it with Exodia Mage, and I'd try that if I had Antonidas/Echo of Medivh...

TaintedDeity wrote:Tainted Deity

suffer-cait wrote:One day I'm gun a go visit weeks and discover they're just a computer in a trashcan at an ice cream shop.

It's interesting, though I feel like there's going to be a wall I hit in the near-ish future because at this point I'm not willing to spend actual factual money on the game yet. I am running into the issue I have run into before in MtG with deck building where I'm not good at deciding X combination of cards is better than Y combination, so that is what I should put in the deck. In casual MtG play, I can get around that by just putting all the things I want to in my deck (though of course that makes it less likely I will draw them, in the end). With Hearthstone there's literally an unsurpassable limit on number of cards in the deck, so that's something I'm struggling with atm.

Finished unlocking all the decks last night, proceeded to attempt a Practice round on Expert, and promptly got my ass handed to me by the computer's Warlock deck, so that was a thing, lol.

I don't see you in any sort of friends list, SDK Why does game hate me?

kalira wrote:In casual MtG play, I can get around that by just putting all the things I want to in my deck (though of course that makes it less likely I will draw them, in the end). With Hearthstone there's literally an unsurpassable limit on number of cards in the deck, so that's something I'm struggling with atm.

Consider this a good thing. Putting more cards in a deck (especially in MTG due to needing to support those extra cards with extra lands) is really bad for making a strong deck. For hearthstone there are plenty of resources out there that show full decks. Once you look through a few, you can figure out how to twerk builds and how to make your own. Basically you want a solid curve for costs. Clearly if you're playing REALLY aggressive you cut the top end and put more low end. Vice versa for control.

Any idea why elemental shaman is rated so poorly? Is it just bad matchups against aggro decks and quest rogue? It seems to have incredible value. I recently beat a C'thun druid who played a 23/23 C'thun and then played Innervate and Earthen Scales the same turn. The game went to fatigue. The next game I beat a Priest with three Un'goro packs and a giant Lyra turn. He ran out of cards. Granted, this was rank 15, but still, those elementals are really strong.

Eebster the Great wrote:Any idea why elemental shaman is rated so poorly? Is it just bad matchups against aggro decks and quest rogue? It seems to have incredible value. I recently beat a C'thun druid who played a 23/23 C'thun and then played Innervate and Earthen Scales the same turn. The game went to fatigue. The next game I beat a Priest with three Un'goro packs and a giant Lyra turn. He ran out of cards. Granted, this was rank 15, but still, those elementals are really strong.

I mean the discover another elemental guy is strong in terms of value, the others not so much. You can get pretty screwed with the discovers too since there are some BAD elementals (Air elemental for example). I also find there can be consistency problems especially around turn 4 when you want to play your Tol'vir but then on turn 5 you can't play your Servant because you played no elemental on 4. If you play an elemental or two on 5 so you can play your Servant next turn, you miss out on your Fire Elemental. You also end up hurting if you need to spend a turn using spells to clear something since again you turn off your next turn's elementals. It's not a terrible deck, but a number of weaknesses just make it worse than a lot of other decks out there.

Eebster the Great wrote:Any idea why elemental shaman is rated so poorly? Is it just bad matchups against aggro decks and quest rogue? It seems to have incredible value. I recently beat a C'thun druid who played a 23/23 C'thun and then played Innervate and Earthen Scales the same turn. The game went to fatigue. The next game I beat a Priest with three Un'goro packs and a giant Lyra turn. He ran out of cards. Granted, this was rank 15, but still, those elementals are really strong.

I mean the discover another elemental guy is strong in terms of value, the others not so much. You can get pretty screwed with the discovers too since there are some BAD elementals (Air elemental for example). I also find there can be consistency problems especially around turn 4 when you want to play your Tol'vir but then on turn 5 you can't play your Servant because you played no elemental on 4. If you play an elemental or two on 5 so you can play your Servant next turn, you miss out on your Fire Elemental. You also end up hurting if you need to spend a turn using spells to clear something since again you turn off your next turn's elementals. It's not a terrible deck, but a number of weaknesses just make it worse than a lot of other decks out there.

It's not just Servant of Kalimos. Kalimos himself is also a lot of value, as are Blazecaller and Fire Elemental. In slow matchups, you don't need to play elementals every turn, you need to hero power. You need to hold onto most of your cards and activate elementals when necessary, so the AOE is mostly just wiping totems, flame elementals, etc. Then you add Jade Claws, Jade Lightning, and Maelstrom Portal for additional minion generation. And the deck doesn't really run any card draw (my list has one Mana Tide Totem, but that's it), so you will win fatigue if it gets that far.

I agree that tempo can be difficult to manage sometimes, especially if you need to Lightning Storm. But I think by being more careful choosing which elementals to hold onto and which to play, it's not so bad. Most elementals don't require synergy, just Servant of Kalimos, Blazecaller, and Kalimos (also Tol'vir Stoneshaper), so you don't always have to play them all on curve. Obviously you would love to see (1) Fire Fly (2) Totemic Call (3) Tar Creeper (4) Tol'vir Stoneshaper + Coin + Flame Elemental (5) Servant of Kalimos (6) Fire Elemental (7) Blazecaller (8) Kalimos. If you do get that curve, you usually win. But even if you don't, the deck is a lot more flexible than you seem to think.

Elementals is a good deck, for sure. Like you said though, you're playing at Rank 15. You won't see C'thun up in the higher ranks either. Hearthstone is nicely balanced that way - lots and lots of good decks, but there are a few that are better than others. I've found it's most important to just get good at playing the deck, and it sounds like you know what you're doing with this one. A good deck can beat the best deck if you're the better pilot.

Take Elementals up to Rank 5 and we can talk about it's true quality. That's where things get tougher, but if you can make it that far, it's a good indication that you've got a great deck. I'm at Rank 10 currently this season, but I took Miracle Rogue up to Rank 5 last month. I played against a lot of Shamans along the way, but they slowly got less common as I moved up the ladder. Though I don't know the Elemental deck well enough to tell you why it lost favour, that's a good indication that the deck is not working for most people.

SDK wrote:Elementals is a good deck, for sure. Like you said though, you're playing at Rank 15. You won't see C'thun up in the higher ranks either. Hearthstone is nicely balanced that way - lots and lots of good decks, but there are a few that are better than others. I've found it's most important to just get good at playing the deck, and it sounds like you know what you're doing with this one. A good deck can beat the best deck if you're the better pilot.

Well sure, you don't see much C'thun at any level (though the win rate of C'thun decks is surprisingly high, or at least it was in the first couple weeks after Un'goro came out). But most of the decks are pretty similar: pirate warrior, taunt warrior, quest rogue, midrange paladin, murloc paladin, control priest, quest priest, freeze mage, aggro druid, midrange hunter, etc. The biggest difference is probably the quality of play rather than the deck composition.

Take Elementals up to Rank 5 and we can talk about it's true quality. That's where things get tougher, but if you can make it that far, it's a good indication that you've got a great deck. I'm at Rank 10 currently this season, but I took Miracle Rogue up to Rank 5 last month. I played against a lot of Shamans along the way, but they slowly got less common as I moved up the ladder. Though I don't know the Elemental deck well enough to tell you why it lost favour, that's a good indication that the deck is not working for most people.

It for sure is not very popular, I'm just trying to figure out why. It might just be the pirate warriors and quest rogues that are so favored and obnoxious.

Weeks wrote:Seems they made Kel'thuzad pretty weak in comparison to Rafaam. Cheap legendaries is...kind of broken.

Arch-Thief Rafaam is probably the slowest legendary minion in all of Hearthstone though. You basically have to spend two entire turns just to get value from him. That's not to say he's bad, but just so slow.

EDIT: I didn't realize you were referring to the tavern brawl. Never mind.

Quest priest is reasonably common, maybe 1 in 15-20 games. It plays like a control priest with only a few deathrattles and no N'Zoth and aims to complete the quest before the end of the game. Typically it's just playing Crystalline Oracle, Mistress of Mixtures, Loot Hoarder, Tortollan Shellraiser, and Shifting Shade, which are all solid cards for control priest anyway. Ten deathrattles are sufficient, but sometimes you play extras like Bloodmage Thalnos, Volatile Elemental, or, rarely, Cairne. You don't need to go all out with the quest; these are good cards anyway, and Amara is extremely strong and worth including Awaken the Makers.

Freeze Mage is pretty common. I'm not sure if we're thinking of the same deck.

Eebster the Great wrote:It's not just Servant of Kalimos. Kalimos himself is also a lot of value, as are Blazecaller and Fire Elemental. In slow matchups, you don't need to play elementals every turn, you need to hero power. You need to hold onto most of your cards and activate elementals when necessary, so the AOE is mostly just wiping totems, flame elementals, etc. Then you add Jade Claws, Jade Lightning, and Maelstrom Portal for additional minion generation. And the deck doesn't really run any card draw (my list has one Mana Tide Totem, but that's it), so you will win fatigue if it gets that far.

Kalimos, Blazecaller and Fire Elemental are all basically tempo cards not value ones (assuming you use Kalimos to clear). Servant is value. The only decks I can think of that would go to Fatigue would be some sort of miracle priest deck and they're going to wreck you with Shadow Visions->Un'goro pack or Lyra if the game goes that long.

Weeks wrote:Quest priest in standard ladder? I thought that deck only worked in wild. Same with freeze mage. I believe burn/discover mage took its place.

Quest Priest is a decent deck. I have one built for Standard, but it's not good enough for higher ranks. Shadow Visions Priest (either the "Silence the Fatties" or "Wannabe Miracles" versions) is all I see.

You're right about Mage, though. The only Mage decks I see these days are Time Warp combo or the burn deck (which are pretty similar in construction anyway).

Pirate Warrior is all but gone at the higher ranks as well. Too many Crawlers being played these days and Paladin is really good right now.